Paper Republic – Chinese Literature in Translation

Nicky Harman

Nicky Harman lives in the UK. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors). She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time from Chinese. She focusses on fiction, literary non-fiction, and occasionally poetry, by authors such as Chen Xiwo, Han Dong, Hong Ying, Dorothy Tse, Xinran, Yan Geling and Zhang Ling. When not translating, she spends time promoting contemporary Chinese fiction to the general English-language reader. From June 2015-June 2016, she, along with Eric Abrahamsen, Dave Haysom and Helen Wang, ran READ PAPER REPUBLIC, posting and promoting a free-to-view short story every week for a year, a project which continues to develop.

She writes blogs, give talks and lectures, and runs literary events especially with the London Free Word Centre, Southbank Centre and the Writing Chinese project (Leeds University). She also mentors new translators, teaches summer schools, and judges translation competitions: the Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize 2012, and the Writing Chinese Translation competition, run by the White Rose East Centre, University of Leeds. Also occasionally reviews China books for the UK's Tribune magazine (eg review of Sheng Keyi's Death Fugue, Giramondo, 2014) . She tweets, with Helen Wang, as the China Fiction Bookclub @cfbcuk.

Paper Republic is delighted to announce the publication of a new creative non-fiction essay. This marks the launch of a second series of Read Paper Republic: China Dispatches, a unique three-way collaboration between Paper Republic, One-Way Street Magazine (单读) and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ China Channel. The series focuses on translating the best non-fiction coming from China right now – and making it available online, completely free to read.

For interested readers, here's an online newsletter, launched May 2018 and now twice-monthly. They feature Chinese longform in translation and also some original English submissions by Chinese authors. The founder and publisher is Colum Murphy, a veteran Asia-based journalist, and Min Lee is the current editor and lead translator. They would love to hear from the translation community, be it comments, suggestions or story ideas.

The Guanghwa Bookshop (Shaftesbury Avenue, London) was packed for our "[Un]Happy Family" event with Yan Ge and translator Nicky Harman last night. We talked about Yan Ge's novel The Chilli Bean Paste Clan (in Chinese《我们家》), its complicated characters, and what was in Yan Ge's mind when she created her middle-aged male [anti]hero, when she herself was in her mid-twenties. And we talked about the challenges of translating colourful Pixian Town obscenities into English, a language where swearing is kind of pale by comparison...and much much more. Thank you all for coming!

The brilliant Charlotte Collins has chosen at least one great translation for each of the last 60 years. Read about them here or on Twitter #TA60, or on Charlotte's Facebook page. And keep following until next June, and like and share, of course. She has unearthed some fascinating nuggets of information about some classic novels.

We say this every year, but this really is a bumper crop. From classics to contemporary literature, poetry to scifi to short stories and a beautiful graphic memoir (Rao Pingru), our list this year has nearly forty novels or other book-length works, and six poetry collections.

And some of last year's books have won or been listed for prestigious prizes:

Remains of Life by Wu He, tr. Michael Berry (Columbia University Press), 2017, was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award 2018.

Notes of a Crocodile, Qiu Miaojin, tr. Bonnie Huie (New York Review Books), was longlisted for the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and won the 2018 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize.

The Stolen Bicycle, by Wu Ming-yi, tr. Darryl Sterk (Text Publishing Company), was longlisted for The Man Booker International Prize.

Chen Xiwo has some very interesting things to say about his short story 'Pain,' from his collection in translation, The Book of Sins, in a discussion on the Los Angeles Review of Books, with his publisher Harvey Thomlinson, LARB's editorial team, and me, Book of Sins translator.

I was asked to produce a list of the ten best novels in translation for the China in Context book festival weekend, which focusses this year on translation. I managed to slip "of the" into the title, and have emphasised it's a very personal list. And I guess any publicity (for Chinese literature) is good publicity!

In-depth article about Jia Zhangke and the Pingyao film festival, including a mention and still from Han Dong's debut A Night at the Wharf [《在码头》] (Han Dong directed, Jia Zhangke produced): https://www.filmcomment.com/article/jia-zhangke-pingyao-film-festival/

Today's news: our very own Helen Wang has been recognised on the international stage for her “special contribution” to children’s literature at the 2017 Chen Bochui International Children's Literature Awards in Shanghai. Details in this link.

Han Dong's first film, One Night at the Wharf, adapted from his novella At the Wharf/在码头, had its first showing at Busan Film Festival last week and got a decent review in Variety. Han Dong directed it, Jia Zhangke was the producer. No news about when it's coming westward yet. More pictures of the screening here.